050510 Groups Take Antibiotic Beef to Congress

Washington - Lobbying efforts are in full swing to stop the nontherapeutic use of antibiotics in farm animals. Keep Antibiotics Working is the front-runner group hoping to push The Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act of 2005 through Congress.

Sponsored by Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, and Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-MA, the bill seeks to halt seven classes of feed additive antibiotics used to promote growth in chickens, hogs and beef cattle.

KAW spokesman Karen Florini said there is "mounting scientific evidence that the routine feeding of antibiotics to farm animals that are not sick promotes development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria that can be transferred to people, making it harder to treat bacterial infections in humans.

"Antibiotic-resistant bacteria can be on food after it is processed, in meat that is not fully cooked, or bacteria can colonize on farm workers who handle feed with additives," Florini said. "And with the several trillion tons of animal waste generated each year in the United States, our eco-system is massively enriched with bacteria."

Rod Hill, assistant professor of growth biology at the University of Idaho, said it is a misconception that antibiotics in animal feed are a type of growth hormone.

"Growth hormones and antibiotics are two very different things," he said "The underlying strategy for antibiotics in feed is to allow animals to remain disease free," he said.

Hill said bacteria are everywhere, but "there are very few that cross over from animals to humans."

"The problem with this kind of legislation is that even if there is only one case of it happening, people who support this think it's one case too many," he said.

Pushing the legislation through Congress bypasses authority vested in the Food and Drug Administration, the agency responsible for monitoring drugs. Florini said that's why KAW and its supporters chose the legislative route.

"It can take up to 20 years for the FDA to make a decision about a drug," Florini said. "We have a better chance taking it to Congress."

But Lloyd Knight, executive director of the Idaho Cattle Association, said the FDA should be making those decisions, not Congress.

"Animal antibiotic use is every bit as much regulated as human antibiotics," Knight said. "Our concern is where does it stop? What's Congress going to meddle around with next?"

Florini emphasizes that the bill does not prohibit using antibiotics to treat sick animals. It leaves farmers with many options including other nontherapeutic antibiotics that are not used in human medicine and suggests improving animal husbandry practices. Though the numbers haven't been hammered out, the bill offers monetary compensation to farmers to change management strategies.

However, a clause in the bill leaves further antibiotic restrictions a possibility. If any antibiotic beyond the seven classified should become important in human use, it would then be banned from use on animals.

For the cattle industry, the legislation could be a moot point.

"Antibiotics as a feed additive for beef cattle isn't a common practice today," Knight said.

With quicker production turn around on the pork and poultry side, producers there might be impacted. But Pat Florence, owner of Independent Meat Co., a Twin Falls Idaho processing plant, said the legislation would have no effect on his business.

"Our partner hog farmers haven't used any antibiotic feed for a number of years," he said.

Florence said Independent Meat's specialty pork line, Salmon Creek Farms, takes a "tremendous amount of management." "We have a big investment in time, energy and money to produce an all-natural product," he said. "So our system of combining animal welfare, genetic consistency and natural feed will continue in spite of this kind of legislation."

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